Elon Musk Says Most Crypto Are Scams, But X Launches New Crypto Trading Terminal
Elon Musk informed an Oakland jury that the majority cryptocurrencies are scams throughout testimony in his civil trial in opposition to OpenAI, marking a notable break from his years as one of many sector’s loudest public boosters.
The Tesla and SpaceX chief made the comment when requested a few 2018 OpenAI plan to lift funds by an preliminary coin providing (ICO), based on New York Times reporter Mike Isaac.
A Sharp Turn for Crypto’s Most Vocal Backer
Musk spent the 2020 to 2021 cycle moving markets with both tweets and corporate buys. Tesla acquired $1.5 billion of Bitcoin (BTC) in 2021, one of many earliest steadiness sheet allocations by a significant public firm.
His posts on Dogecoin (DOGE) repeatedly pushed the meme token to new highs that very same yr. The billionaire has additionally confirmed private holdings in Bitcoin, Ethereum (ETH), and Dogecoin across past interviews.
That stance started to chill in 2022, when Tesla sold roughly 75% of its Bitcoin reserve. The firm has held the place regular since, retaining 11,509 BTC value $879 million in Q1 2026 after a $222 million markdown.
Elon Musk Tells Jury Most Crypto Is a Scam as X Rolls Out Cashtags
The courtroom comment coincided with a parallel push at Musk’s social platform. X head of product Nikita Bier stated the corporate was rolling out a web version of Cashtags, a characteristic that converts $tickers for shares and crypto into clickable real-time charts and asset-specific put up feeds.
Bier framed the device as a approach to place X as a core buying and selling terminal. Bundled controls, together with contract tackle matching and account locks on first-time crypto posters, are supposed to filter out fraudulent tokens earlier than they attain customers.
The rollout matches a broader X finance push that additionally contains funds and pilot buying and selling options. Musk’s distinction between benefit belongings and scams maps straight onto Cashtags’ pitch, separating what the characteristic desires to floor from what its anti-scam controls are designed to suppress.
ICO Plan Resurfaces in Court
The rip-off remark surfaced as OpenAI’s scrapped 2018 token proposal entered the trial report.
“In January 2018, mere months after their September 2017 ‘enthusiasm,’ Altman proposed a scamworthy ‘ICO,’ or preliminary coin providing, that may have seen OpenAI, Inc. promote its personal cryptocurrency. Musk shot down this concept too, stating ‘it will merely end in an enormous lack of credibility for OpenAI and everybody related to the ICO,’” Musk’s staff claimed.
Musk, an OpenAI co-founder from 2015, alleges the corporate breached its founding contract by partnering with Microsoft and promoting industrial merchandise.
“Some of them have benefit, however most of them are scams.”
That language got here in response to questions concerning the early ICO dialogue, attributed by Isaac.
OpenAI counters that Musk backed the ICO plan, which might have required spinning out a for-profit subsidiary. Jury proceedings are anticipated to final about three weeks.
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